Editors Page: Dear Professor Renfrew
004
Cambridge University
Cambridge, England
Dear Professor Renfrew,
I mean no disrespect when I say that I tossed your book into my 40-year-old attaché case. It’s always a bit hectic when my wife and I are getting ready to leave on our annual winter week in the Caribbean. To be honest, what initially attracted me to your book in the stack of books I intended—hoped, would be a better word—one day to read was that it was thin. Besides, the subject was one I was particularly interested in—Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership. And of course I knew your reputation as one of the world’s most prominent and most respected archaeologists and as a professor at the University of Cambridge.
Because it was a last-minute toss, your book ended up on top of the pile and was the first thing I pulled out when we got on the plane. It turned out to be a quick read. I finished it by the time we touched down in Grand Cayman—just 90 pages, excluding appendices of international conventions and such. And you write well; the book was a pleasure to read, passionate, articulate and, most importantly, well-reasoned. In short, for anyone who differs with you, as I do, your argument deserves an answer.
We don’t disagree about everything. Perhaps on the most important thing we agree: We both abhor archaeological looting—the illicit excavation and theft of antiquities in order to sell them on the commercial antiquities market. Can you believe that I abhor looters as much as you do, even though I sometimes disagree with you as to what should be done about it? Your solution is essentially to eliminate what you call this “iniquitous,” “sleazy” market by discouraging collecting (“morally dubious”), vilifying antiquities dealers (an “unsavoury” bunch) and museums, and strengthening the law so that the sale and acquisition of looted antiquities is illegal. If there were no one to buy looted antiquities, so your argument runs, there would be no market for them and the looters would, in effect, be out of business. Q.E.D.
But you admit at the outset that looting cannot be eliminated in this way. “Probably there will always be a clandestine sale in unprovenanced antiquities,” you concede. There in that one sentence you undercut the major theme and argument of your book. Even after you have made all your impassioned arguments, you admit that “it is difficult to conclude other than on a note of pessimism.” Indeed, Professor Renfrew, if we are ever to eliminate or even reduce looting, we must look for other ways to address the problem.
Even if your educational campaign were successful, this would simply drive the market underground. You wouldn’t need to worry about a museum’s legitimating an unprovenanced artifact or a scholar’s writing an essay for a museum catalogue that included unprovenanced artifacts. The museum would never see them. The scholar would never know about them. They would be consigned to someone’s basement—or private garden.
Your book does avoid most extreme statements, which often weaken a good argument. It is often said, for example, that looted objects—removed from their context—are worthless. My reply to this has always been that they may be worth less, but they are not worthless. Instead of extreme statements like this, you state: “Separated from their context of discovery [looted 054artifacts] have very little potential to add to our knowledge.”
You also note that some academic extremists contend that scholars should not even cite in print an unprovenanced artifact that is relevant to their scholarly study. While recognizing that “there is much to this argument,” you do not adopt it yourself.
And you don’t mince words when it comes to identifying the wrongdoers: “Museums betray their trust as serious students of the past” when they display unprovenanced antiquities. You also name names: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California. You stigmatize specific museum curators, such as the Metropolitan’s Dietrich von Bothmer and Cornelius C. Vermeule III of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. You also charge, “Collectors are the real looters.” Again you name names: George Ortiz, Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, Shelby White and Leon Levy.
You also commendably avoid self-righteousness by confessing your own wayward ways in the past. “I myself must plead guilty,” you say, to having contributed scholarly essays in catalogues of museum exhibits “replete with looted antiquities.” This occurred as late as 1991. You do not explain what changed your mind, however, in less than a decade.
One thing I like about your argument is that you address the counter-arguments. It is not just two sides passing in the night without confronting each other. You know and meet the other side. Most importantly, you address the argument that sometimes there is “public benefit” from purchasing looted objects so that they can be studied and displayed. You don’t buy this argument. It’s a “slippery slope,” you say, involving the purchaser in the “funding of looting and the destruction of the past.” You admit it may be “painful” not to rescue a particular piece; you even compare it to ransoming someone who is kidnapped. You are against this, too: To ransom someone is to “reward the kidnapper … [and] fund the kidnapping process.”
That’s where you begin to lose me, Professor Renfrew. God forbid that someone dear to you is kidnapped. There are some cases involving, for example, kidnapped Israeli soldiers whose ransom is refused as a matter of principle. There are many other cases, however, in which any humane person would pay the ransom.
It is the same thing with looted (and stolen) antiquities. Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. In your book, you discuss many artifacts that have been looted. You describe rampant looting in Egypt, Italy, Greece, Britain, Latin America, Africa, Iraq, India, Thailand and Nepal. But oddly, not Israel or the West Bank. You don’t mention one of the most extraordinary recoveries of the 20th century: the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of them were illegally looted by Bedouin. They were ransomed—purchased, if you prefer—on the antiquities market. So was a little inscribed ivory pomegranate, probably once used in the Solomonic temple; the Israel Museum ransomed this one in Switzerland for $550,000. Now the whole world can see it. We know of nine bullae impressed with seals of Israelite kings—all acquired on the antiquities market. Would you refuse to have anything do with these things? Would you forego the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Take the situation in southern Italy, where three generations of looters have recovered over 15,000 vases from ancient tombs. Isn’t stopping this primarily the responsibility of the Italian government, rather than collectors, museums and antiquities dealers? This is another case you don’t discuss.
The rampant looting in Israel and Jordan turns up mainly undistinguished pots and oil lamps. This market could be put out of business if both governments would sell certified-authentic pots and lamps from the thousands and thousands of duplicates in their overflowing storerooms that they don’t know what to do with. Why don’t you add your powerful voice to the few who would speak up for selling such multiple copies (there are “few” people only 055because of fear of criticism from people like you)?a
You mention approvingly the case of Sipan, Peru, where looting was stopped by educating the villagers to the fact that they would make more money if they preserved and protected the site for tourists, rather than looting it. This is a wonderful market-based solution that should obviously be encouraged where it is available.
Why not explore other market-based solutions? In short, the looting problem is not just one problem. It is many problems that must be dealt with differently. A one-size-fits-all solution just doesn’t work. In some cases it might be possible to have professional archaeologists excavate sites that are subject to looting, using local villagers as paid workers, with the funding provided by selling the finds either to museums or to collectors who will give them to museums.
You quote approvingly from a recent article by archaeologist Konstantinos D. Politis, decrying a large shipment of antiquities from Jordan to New York. I have spoken with Dino Politis about the situation in Jordan where he digs near the southern shore of the Dead Sea. The local villagers who have no other way of earning a living have looted hundreds of ancient tombstones. Politis has also expressed in print some sympathy for the villagers who literally dig to eat. He himself has rescued some of the tombstones. Why doesn’t the government organize a professional archaeological expedition to excavate the cemetery, with villagers as paid workmen, with funding provided by the sale of the tombstones? Wouldn’t this be better than having them disappear clandestinely?
From your book, you sound like a very reasonable fellow, although quite impassioned. I like that combination. That is why I am writing you. I thought we might engage in a reasonable, if perhaps impassioned, exchange.
Respectfully,
Hershel Shanks
Prof. Colin Renfrew Cambridge University Cambridge, England Dear Professor Renfrew, I mean no disrespect when I say that I tossed your book into my 40-year-old attaché case. It’s always a bit hectic when my wife and I are getting ready to leave on our annual winter week in the Caribbean. To be honest, what initially attracted me to your book in the stack of books I intended—hoped, would be a better word—one day to read was that it was thin. Besides, the subject was one I was particularly interested in—Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership. And of course I knew your […]
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Footnotes
See Avner Raban, “Stop the Charade: It’s Time to Sell Artifacts,” BAR 23:03; and Hershel Shanks, “Italy’s Top Antiqiuties Cops Fight Back,” AO 05:01.